(Original post by fgn)
Not a fan of proportionality?
Ah yes back in the day when you could still pick up weed, coke and opiates from any pharmacy, opium dens were all the rage and the Queen was a stoner.

You don't need the pharmacy selling to have 1 in 15 smoking weed, 1 in 50 doing coke, and 1 in 100 shooting heroin in a given 12 month window. Apparently we once had a hard deterrent, unsurprisingly we haven't been told when, because we haven't, we've only had soft deterrents that. We haven't, at least recently, had personal possession offences that are actually enforced, let alone the zero tolerance policies that are demonstrated effective all around the world.

(Original post by Jammy Duel)
You don't need the pharmacy selling to have 1 in 15 smoking weed, 1 in 50 doing coke, and 1 in 100 shooting heroin in a given 12 month window.

??

(Original post by Jammy Duel)
Apparently we once had a hard deterrent, unsurprisingly we haven't been told when, because we haven't, we've only had soft deterrents that. We haven't, at least recently, had personal possession offences that are actually enforced,

We've had disproportionate sentencing for drugs possession and we've had more relaxed guidelines and policing, it's made little difference, we've been most successful when taking Thatchers approach of employing harm reduction measures such as needle exchanges and shooting galleries. We're not a puritanical nation it's never been our aim to attempt something as ridiculous as eradicating drug use, we've gone to war to stop the prohibition of drugs and our current drug laws were only put in place to appease our more puritanical allies.

(Original post by Jammy Duel)
let alone the zero tolerance policies that are demonstrated effective all around the world.

(Original post by Mactotaur)
I would imagine policies such as Iran's death penalty.

Interestingly I believe cannabis is actually legal in Iran. I doubt jammy duel would want us looking to Iran for guidance, I imagine he probably meant approaches like Japans. Japan is culturally very different to us and the Yakuza tend to be anti-drugs which will obviously have quite an impact on use, however I believe even there they have a huge problem with amphetamines. But we don't have to look that far, the US have tried zero tolerance and it's achieved nothing but to fill prisons.

(Original post by Jammy Duel)
I raise you Japan, one of the lowest drug use rates in the world, although some put that down to people actually having a sense of respect absent in the West, Sweden on the other hand does not, it has some of the strictest laws in the West and, guess what, some of the lowest usage rates.

Sweden is an awful example, it has usage rates no lower than some other parts of Europe, among the highest rates of drug deaths in Europe and amongst the highest spending to achieve it.